Ha! —true, that makes it difficult at first. He's a monk in a religious tradition, but I don't think he's very religious himself. He definitely keeps the content of his talks almost totally free of religious/spiritual stuff. He also studied physics at Cambridge, and is generally pretty rational. But yeah, funny costume :)

Those are ordinary Buddhist monk's robes.

>> I can't take him seriously

Those are normal clothes for monks. You won't take someone seriously because they wear different clothes than you ?